Scams and Frauds (Plus George W. Bush and Michelle Rhee) At Upcoming Subprime College Conference in Vegas

Michelle Rhee will join George W. Bush as a speaker at the annual for-profit colleges meeting in Las Vegas.

Republic Report previously reported that former President George W. Bush will be speaking at the annual meeting of APSCU, the leading association of for-profit colleges, on June 22 at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. For-profit colleges get $32 billion in student aid from your tax dollars every year, but many are marked by deceptive recruiting, low-quality programs, sky-high prices, and high dropout rates.

Bush is an appropriate speaker, in a sense, because his Administration’s deliberate actions made it easier for bad actors among for-profit schools to engage in a decade of waste, fraud, and abuse that has earned them billions in profits but has left many former students deep in debt and without job prospects. Bush’s appearance is “presented” by Pearson, the education publishing company whose nonprofit foundation is now under investigation by the New York attorney general for allegedly seeking to improperly influence state education officials with free trips to destinations like London, Helsinki, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro.

But the overall conference is mostly presented by … you and me, because taxpayers provide close to 90 percent of revenues for many for-profit schools. So Republic Report wants you to stay informed about how your money is being spent on this Vegas event, just as we’ve covered APSCU’s Washington DC lobby meeting and its luxurious “senior executive management seminar” at the “palatial Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe resort.”

Well, there is more to report:

Scam bookings: APSCU’s website now warns of “Annual Convention Lodging Scam Alert: BEWARE!” Apparently, “at least two companies have been calling APSCU 2012 Annual Convention registrants and exhibitors luring them to book hotel rooms through them.” But, “This effort is in no way sanctioned by APSCU and interferes with APSCU’s existing contracts with hotels to secure adequate room space and favorable group rates for Convention participants…. The two known companies are: National Travel Associates and Convention Expo Travel. The scams may be operating under other names, as well. THESE COMPANIES HAVE NO AFFILIATION WITH APSCU. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND TO THESE ATTEMPTS AT ‘HOUSING PIRACY,’ WHICH IS A SCAM AFFECTING THE LAS VEGAS CONVENTION BUSINESS.” Well, then. We don’t want anyone ripped off.

Scam entertainment: APSCU has announced the performers for its Annual Concert, and it’s Creedence Clearwater Revisited. Woo-hoo! “Fortunate Son,” “Proud Mary,” “Who’ll Stop the Rain”! Wait, Creedence Clearwater Revisited? We thought it said Creedence Clearwater Revival, the great late sixties band. Certainly the logo looks similar. Turns out Creedence Clearwater Revisited does have the original drummer and bass player from Creedence Clearwater Revival, but it doesn’t have John Fogerty, the guy who wrote and sang all the hits. Fogerty’s only connection to this band is that he once sued them. At least APSCU is economizing here with our tax dollars by hiring a phony band.

Scam attendees (allegedly): Here are some member highlights since last year’s APSCU convention:

The attorneys general of 23 states have pursued a joint investigation of possible fraudulent activities by for-profit colleges including Corinthian, University of Phoenix, Education Management Corp., Kaplan, Keiser, and Bridgepoint.

The U.S. Justice Department and half a dozen states have sued Education Management Corp., owner of the Art Institutes and other for-profits, for fraud, alleging the company paid its recruiters based on the number of students signed up, in violation of federal rules. (EDMC denies these claims.)

Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, disclosed on Thursday, that the SEC is investigating the company regarding insider trading. (Apollo said it would cooperate.)

Finally, some really depressing news: APSCU has announced the conference’s “additional speaker,” and it’s former District of Columbia Public Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, now the CEO of education advocacy group Students First. If you’ve been on the fence about Rhee, not sure if she’s a sincere reformer with real results or a union-busting elitist aimed at replacing public education with charters, private schools, and online learning companies, you may find cause to jump off the fence now. By speaking at the annual meeting of the most cynical group of “educators” ever assembled — Wall-Street owned businesses that enrich their CEOs and ruin students’ lives at taxpayer expense and then hire armies of lobbyists to protect their privileges — Rhee has made her preferences very clear. (It’s always possible that she agreed to speak with the intent of telling the for-profits to clean up their act, but I doubt it.) Rhee staked her career on the concept of shutting down underperforming, bad schools. And now she will address a room full of them.

Well-nigh impossible to change the mind of the Rheetards with something as marginal as glaring evidence of her greed and utter lack of principles. Nope, it would take, minimally, sworn testimony from Jesus Christ himself (and they’d still want a lie detector test, video documentation, and a signed confession from Rhee).

CatKinNY

There is an ongoing investigation in DC into her miraculously improved test scores (it’s going to look just like Atlanta), her motivation in firing the principals of two of the districts best schools, etc; add that to the fact that the district just lost a suit involving several hundred teachers she fired without cause that’s going to cost millions of dollars in back pay, and her reputation with people who actually give a crap about education will be toast. Of course, that won’t make a damn bit of difference with Republicans, since all they ever cared about was her zeal as a union buster and public school privatizer.

I love the confrontational tone here. MSM hacks may think it lacks subtlety and nuance, but those words have only come to be euphemisms for cowardice.

David Halperin

I tried to have subtlety AND nuance. Darnit.

Preston Law

Oh dear. Look, David, subtlety and nuance often just flies over your audience’s collective heads. If you need to get a point across, you need to 1) be as blunt as possible, and 2) try to be as non-disprovable as possible; that means referencing facts, well-conducted studies, etc, and at the very least, present your argument in such a way that conclusions may easily be drawn from it. I happen to like Republic Report because it does this a lot; it has managed to prove to me that for-profit colleges contribute significantly to the climate of corruption in Congress, and I try my best to be a skeptic by nature.

Dennis

I bet you negative nellys also call your selves CHRISTIANS.Well I have your sign.(I hate commys but I are one)Putting all the power in the hands of big corp’s is ignorant as HELL!!! And if you believe the rich mans mantra that a divided government is best your an ASS!! Must you be reminded that the good book says THAT A HOUSE DIVIDED WILL NOT STAND!!!!!!!!!!!!! You unknowingly are bringing communism to our government!! Reaganomics already put us into a FASCIST Nation! So subtlety not from ME! Your all JACKASS’S if you think otherwise!

What we need to do is simple. Get rid of all federal subsidies and grants for higher education, and use that money to invest directly into affordable public institutions. Community colleges manage to keep their costs down, I don’t think the government should continue to subsidize any institution that can’t. Think about it – the system we have now for higher education is a voucher program.

Wevian69

You do know that President Clinton was the speaker two years ago right? Please do your homework.

Smith

And Colin Powell last year for what it’s worth.

Kevinfitzz

rhee is the girlfriend of kevin johnson, our mayor of sacramento california. besides a charter school failure, it seems the only job johnson wants to do is keep the saramento kings basketball team here. he has turned into a loser, just like the kings and michelle

Michelle Rhee is an archetype, a zealot free of scruples.
And she’s in love is “Me, Me, Me”, while saying she’s for pupils.
She lies and bullies, charms and worms — and some say, “She’s the greatest.”
But in the end, she’ll meet herself — as Caesar did, in Brutus.

Arjun Janah

Michelle Rhee is an archetype, a zealot free of scruples.
And she’s in love WITH “Me, Me, Me”, while saying she’s for pupils.
She lies and bullies, charms and worms — and some say, “She’s the greatest.”
But in the end, she’ll meet herself — as Caesar did, in Brutus.

1LTLos

Kind reminds a person of the trash in the white house – Obscumbo – just another narcisist exceppt this one wears skirts and high heels. Cut from the same mold

With Bush it is one scam after another.
1. Saudis buy failed Bush oil company.
2, Bush gets an on the spot position in the Texas Air National Guard.
3. Why was Bush grounded?
4, Where was Bush in Alabama and who cant testify to serving with him?
5. Bush ignores the August 6, memo.
6. Why was only one plane filled with Saudis allowed in the air post 9/11
7. Osama Bin Laden was the son of a Saudi prince.
8. 11 of the 15 hijackers were Saudis, none were Iraqis.
9. Where was the proof of a mushroom cloud capability in Iraq?
10 Where were the wmds?
11. Why didn’t Bush allow the IAEA to complete its job?
12. Why did Bush preemptively attack Iraq?
13. Why did Bush invite and embrace Saudis at his Texas ranch?
14. In a preemptive war, why attack with the army you got and not the one you want?
15. While our boys are being killed in Iraq, Bush makes jokes looking for wmds under his desk.
16. Need I go on?

lostcauses

Thank you, your list is awesome. Never forget the crimes of Bush/Dick

CatKinNY

I despise W as much as you do, but let’s remain members of what he used to deride as ‘the reality based community’. The Bin Laden family fortune was earned in construction in Saudi Arabia, and UBL got tons of ‘charitable contributions’ from Saudi royals, but the family is Yemeni, and commoners.

I despise W as much as you do, but let’s remain members of what he used to deride as ‘the reality based community’. The Bin Laden family fortune was earned in construction in Saudi Arabia, and UBL got tons of ‘charitable contributions’ from Saudi royals, but the family is Yemeni, and commoners.
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The money is through grants, loan guarantees, and other financial aid which students of these institutions may be eligible for. The education successful students receive may very well be of little or no financial benefit to them, and former students may be unable to repay student loan money they paid for useless “career training”. Government is responsible for the full amount of the loan, and the school may have gone out of business before graduation day.

Guest

Not in California, last election the private school lobbyist paid for this to be put on the ballot, taking away more funds from public schools! When has Privatizing anything be a good deal for U.S.

Arachne646

I was talking about private post-secondary colleges, technical schools, etc. ripping off students and the Feds through loans and Title IV grants.

There is no point in public money going to private, charter, magnet, or voucher school systems, or those systems which include these. Charter schools fail at prodigious rates and go out of business. Their whole purpose is to get rid of teachers’ unions. The US school system is broken, segregation is worse than ever, and nothing any popular politicians are calling for is going to work. Try looking abroad for solutions. Canadian teachers are all unionized, and it and many other countries out-perform the US in public school education and have for years.

Okay, after reading all the hate comments on this article, I felt I had to chime in.

First off, I give quite a bit more than a crap about education. I am a ‘junior’ in high school who skipped first grade and started homeschooling myself after 5th grade because I was so far ahead of my classmates it wasn’t even funny. I have scores of 5 in no less than 8 Advanced Placement exams (8th grade: Biology, 9th grade: Calculus BC, Computer Science, Physics B, 10th grade: Physics C Mechanics, Physics C E&M, Music Theory, and Chemistry), am taking four more this year (Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Statistics, and US Government/Politics), and I intend to pursue majors in business- and computer science-related fields, so I have considerable interest in making the educational system better, even if it’s only because I don’t want anybody else who’s smart to go through the misery that I went through.

Next, I have a statistic. According to Wikipedia, 59% of charter schools have a waiting list. Why is that? They must be viewed as better by a significant amount of people, and I argue that the reason is that the charter schools must have high student performance or they will have their charter revoked. Thus, they have a much higher stake in teaching students well than public schools do; as a consequence, the quality of education is much better. This has been verified to as close a degree of accuracy as educational studies can prove. So what else is different about charter schools?

The answer is, absolutely nothing. All the benefits follow from the conditions attached to the charters; notable government regulations generally applied to regular public schools do not necessarily have to be included in said charters. Their teachers don’t have to be unionized, for example. This introduces a side effect which most people are slow to realize is actually a benefit: competition in the teacher market. What happens if a charter school teacher is sub-par? He/she promptly gets fired, because the charter school can’t afford to have bad teachers. What happens if a regular public school teacher is sub-par? Nothing, because teachers’ unions require tenure for their constituents after a short time period, and it’s extraordinarily difficult to fire tenured teachers. Result? A school filled with good teachers.

I note that the concept of tenure was originally introduced as a benefit for university professors who had worked at said university for a sizable chunk of their career and who had been proven to be top-notch, in order to keep the top-notch professor working at the university. I ask you, readers – if you ran a school, would you award tenure to a public primary school teacher with only five or so years of experience? I know I wouldn’t; determining the quality of the teacher would be more of a guess than anything. And yet public schools do it quite frequently, because the unions tell them to do it and threaten to cause a shortage of teachers for hire if they don’t. Now, what does that cause? Public schools have the responsibility of educating the vast majority of our citizens; if the grammar level of even the least capable person who finds this site is represented by, and I quote:

“I bet you negative nellys also call your selves CHRISTIANS.Well I have your sign.(I hate commys but I are one)Putting all the power in the hands of big corp’s is ignorant as HELL!!! And if you believe the rich mans mantra that a divided government is best your an ASS!! Must you be reminded that the good book says THAT A HOUSE DIVIDED WILL NOT STAND!!!!!!!!!!!!! You unknowingly are bringing communism to our government!! Reaganomics already put us into a FASCIST Nation! So subtlety not from ME! Your all JACKASS’S if you think otherwise!” – @Dennis

Then, something must not be working.

It shouldn’t be hard to see that the teachers’ unions have a vested interest in not allowing the proliferation of charter schools, just as the Soviet Union had a vested interest in not allowing capitalism to proliferate, Southern plantation owners had a vested interest in not allowing freedom for slaves, the scribe industry had a vested interest in not allowing the proliferation of Gutenberg’s printing press, and how King Herod had a vested interest in not allowing Jesus Christ to live. The teachers’ union’s argument is that all teachers are alike and therefore deserve one uniform wage, but it can easily be seen to be painfully untrue. If you have kids, you might try visiting the school they go to and listen in to the schoolwork for just one (count it, one) day. The results should horrify you. Why, at my local high school, there has been more than one kid who’s decided to make out in an empty classroom with his girlfriend in preference to showing up for the AP exams at the end of the year!

Anyone who’s gone through what I have should be able to figure out on their own that something needs to change; it just falls to people like Rhee to tell us what, even if we don’t listen at first. I pity the poor woman; she’s going to be fighting an uphill battle until everyone realizes what she’s telling us and charter schools take the battlefield by storm. But I, for one, am going to assist her in any way I can, because I hated my public school experience, because I don’t want to see more of our jobs being filled with incompetents and being shipped to China, and because I believe that education is a fundamental right, on par with life and liberty, and that anything limiting it hinders the natural progress of civilization.

Guest

Are you saying teachers’ unions have complete control over the student syllabus that public schools provide? How about the responsibility of the over paid administrative heads? Do private schools also have to provide for the handicap?

Preston Law

No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that the unions have an unhealthily high degree of control over the conditions that govern the hiring and firing of teachers, so bad teachers are given undeserved tenure, and that the teachers have the control over the syllabus. Effectively, the unions give the schools opportunities to provide bad syllabi.

Overpaid administrative heads, if they are a problem, seem to be a much less visible problem. I researched it, didn’t find much. If you could elaborate a little, I’d be grateful.

And what handicap are you talking about? Is it something I referenced?

Arjun Janah

I have taught in the New York City Public schools for close to a quarter century. I came in with a doctorate in physics, almost a decade of experience in teaching and research in the universities on both coasts, a great deal of idealism and altruism that has persisted, and a complete lack of cynicism that has lasted.

It seems that I have inhabited a very different universe from the one you describe. Could it be that most of what is available in print and online is as unreliable as the “evidence” that was used to plunge our troops and the citizens of another, distant, country into a devastating and pointless war? Could it be that there are agendas and interests that are being pursued and that the voices of dissent have been systematically silenced?

The unions that you speak of were in little evidence in the decades that I have spent in the schools, and there “control” over hiring (and firing) was paltry or none. As for control over the syllabi, what a laugh! Teachers are unable to influence even the time-allocation, let alone the content, of syllabi mandated by state or city.

As for administrators, unfortunately, too many, indeed the majority, constitute the weakest link in the educational edifice, bowing to whatever fad or diktat may be current, and, increasingly, constituted of people who have fled the classroom after the briefest possible exposure to its traumas. Of late, we see many who have none at all!

Did I say “weakest link?” No, that category should be reserved for the top administrators, especially those like New York City’s Klein, Chicago’s Duncan and DC’s Rhee, whose lack of experience is matched by their lack of integrity.

There are no substitutes for caring, patience, diligence, knowledge and experience on the part of teachers, just as there are no substitutes for the corresponding virtues on the part of students.

Preston Law

1st paragraph: Good for you! What grade levels have you taught? At what school, and what subject (if applicable)? Was it a magnet school? If it is, I’m not surprised that you like the part of the system that you have had experience with so much…

2nd paragraph: Certainly, my dear Arjun; I make no secret of the fact that a lot of stuff on the Net is unreliable (unlike some of the politicians that Republic Report seems to delight in pasting to the wall), and that the only defense against it is to go through as much as you can and pick out the stuff that is reliable. Oh, and conflicting agendas happen all the time in the governments of the states and cities that mandate your syllabi, methinks. Finally, voices of dissent are getting much harder to silence, thankfully.

3rd paragraph: Woohoo! So the unions don’t have complete control everywhere! Now prove that your school is representative of the entire system.

4th paragraph: I’m afraid that here is where I must insist on more clarification.

5th paragraph: See response to paragraph 4.

6th paragraph: Absolutely correct, but can you guarantee that the vast majority of teachers have caring, patience, diligence, knowledge, and experience? From what I’ve experienced, I won’t be unconditionally accepting any study that says so; I’ll be subjecting it to scrutiny.

1LTLos

I agree here in that unions are necessary on a campus because the administrators abuse the instructors with regularity. Teachers need a strong union but a union interested in strong teachers and strong teaching – not politics such as the AFT. That is a wothless union and with the Administrators being represented by the Teamsters this is the reason you do not hear of Administrator abuses or crimes — these get swept under the rug. Get rid of these scumbag administrators and I guarantee you that instruction in all levels of schools will sky rocket!!

sentinel

Preston Law, well done! I wish we had a few hundred more students like you. I hope you can help us turn the schools into something
wonderful again.

JeffereyTiffensmythe

wow, you are the most pompous 15 year old i’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing about. you “home-schooled yourself”? i hope you get into one of your beloved for-profit colleges so you can write an equally annoying post about how great they are in a few months… as i am sure you will burn through those courses just as quickly as your little youtube lessons that you’ve been doing so far.

Preston Law

Excuse me, but 1) I’m 16 (even though I didn’t expect you to know that), and 2) I’m not the one touting the for-profit colleges as though they’re the best thing on earth since the personal computer; if you want that, go listen to some of Mitt Romney’s speeches; I’m sure that you’ll find him much less pompous than me. Note the sarcasm there as well, please.

By the way, I try not to be pompous, but if I start bragging, at least there’s some measure of justification; what are your qualifications? What college did you get into? I’m aiming for Harvard, one of the best NONPROFIT schools in the country, and I expect to get in. And yes, I expect to burn through Harvard’s courses and get great grades, but more importantly, I expect to LEARN from them.

Finally, I wouldn’t laugh at my “little youtube lessons” quite as readily as you; they got me through several of my 12 APs, so if you’re going to laugh, laugh at the AP foundation so every OTHER reader can call you out on it, or laugh along with me at the very high percentage of public-schooled students who only do 1 AP test or none at all.

1LTLos

Harvard Sucks pal! Harvard of Today is not the Harvard of the 19th Century when Education was King — Today Harvard churns out little commies who think that they are going to outsmart our Founding Fathers and work their way around the US Constitution like one bogus student named Barrack Obscumbo.

Alejhundro

look at the industry closely before you jump on board with rhee. Charter does not mean good.Alternative does not mean good. Much of what you say is true however there is corruption everywhere as well as good. Administrations compliantly deal with unions to protect their jobs. Survival will cause people to throw their friends overboard just so the boat won’t rock.

And yes, charter does not necessarily mean good. However, charter means “better than public schooling on average” in my book, and there’s a fair amount of proof for that. Alternative doesn’t usually mean good, also true, but it depends on what the alternative is, of course; I mean, if you’re a Jew in Nazi Germany, the alternative (living in the US) looks pretty darn good, right? But yes, usually the distinction isn’t as black-and-white as that. Corruption finds its’ way into a lot of places, also true, but there are ways to fix that, and I fervently hope that they get adopted soon.

But, from my post above, charter schools don’t have to deal with unions if they can wangle a clause that says so into their charter, which I’m pretty sure a fair amount do.

I wish I could end on a better note, but I have to admit I’m not sure what you mean in your last sentence.

1LTLos

As per my last reply to you what he means is similar to what I posted
“Teachers need a strong union but a union interested in strong teachers and strong teaching – not politics such as the AFT. That is a wothless union and with the Administrators being represented by the Teamsters this is the reason you do not hear of Administrator abuses or crimes — these get swept under the rug. Get rid of these scumbag administrators and I guarantee you that instruction in all levels of schools will sky rocket!!”
Since most teachers suck, they will be willing to serve the will of an abusive administrator to get their way happily sweeping the usually very good or gifted teachers under the bus — it happens every day across the natiion in education.
You dont know you are 15 yrs old.

Preston Law

It’s been two weeks since I posted the above, and I haven’t really gotten many good replies at all. So, I’m going to partially quote the Wikipedia founders and say,

Humor me. Reply to my topic, go through all my points, and separately address your reactions to each, the way I did with the other replies. It will take all of five or ten minutes…

1LTLos

Separation of Powers does not equal a Divided house. The separation of powers allows that our house still stands after 235 years. Rhee is a joke with no genuine means nor methods outside of solid pedogogical teaching approaches that any Teacher or as in my case Professor will not adopt after teaching several years. No one sitting on their behinds stealing 6 figures from taxpayers is going impact the classroom in any other way except negatively if they are not actively teaching themselves — You may have taught yourself but to end up a Commie after homeschooling yourself I wonder if you did not have that proverbial idiot for a teacher? Rhee is just another White Chalk Criminal and it is Instructors like myself who are taking large school districts with their communist unions to task. You on your own with your vast wealth I doubt will do anything in the next ten to fifteen years.

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